


walking the line

by onthelasttrain



Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Violence, Post Violence, before s2 of alien force, dancing around feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:07:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25126753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onthelasttrain/pseuds/onthelasttrain
Summary: Gwen gets a call from a number she doesn't recognise and it's the last person she'd expect to hear from. When her night turns into patching up a teammate, new and complicated feelings come up for both of them and she finds herself wondering what they are to each other.
Relationships: Kevin Levin/Gwen Tennyson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	walking the line

**Author's Note:**

> yes we're at that stage of quarantine where we write fics about our childhood otps. sue me.

She doesn’t recognise the number.

When Gwen picks up her ringing phone, a sight that’s slightly unusual for a Tuesday night, the number across the screen isn’t one she recognises. Her shoulders tense and she bites the inside of her cheek, a whole debate passing through her mind in one second. Memories of her phone number being passed around last year spring forwards, along with all the unpleasantness that came with that. Surely that’s all history at this point, right? And even if, worst case scenario, it’s not, she know how to handle herself now more than ever.

She presses answer and braces herself for the worst.

“Gwen?” At first the voice is unrecognisable as well. It’s pained and tight, just a step above a whisper. Her mystery caller coughs and grunts on their end of the call and mutters something she can’t hear and probably shouldn’t want to. She’s just about to get concerned when clarity begins creeping in and the gruff tone and the way they say her name becomes intimately familiar, probably too intimate since she’s barely known him a few weeks.

“Kevin?” she asks, disbelief evident in her voice. She vaguely remembers giving him her number not long ago and sternly saying ‘for emergencies only’. Should she be hoping this is the case? “Kevin, what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry,” he says and she hears a sharp breath that brings her to attention. “I wouldn’t call if I didn’t have another option, and you did say to call you in an emergency, and I don’t know if this counts since it’s not a Ben-related one-”

“Kev, slow down,” she tells him, beginning to pace her room. All her panic training comes back to her and despite her own heart picking up, she keeps her voice calm. “What’s going on?”

“I need-I need you to get some stuff for me.”

“That sounds worrying,” she tells him. “Knowing your history.” He lets out something that resembles a laugh, only for him to gasp and curse under his breath.

“Not like that,” he says. “Trust me, I wouldn’t do that to you. For one thing, you couldn’t if you tried. Those guys would chew you up and spit you out.”

“If you didn’t sound like you were on death’s door, I’d make you regret that.” She pauses and chews her nail, a habit she’s never quite managed to kick. God only knows what state he’s in, or where he is, but it can’t be good. The pause is filled with his heavy, harsh breathing and muted whimpering. Forget making him regret anything, she’s sure she’ll regret this. “What do you need?”

“Um… painkillers. Bandages. That pink antiseptic stuff you rub on cuts… Well the colour doesn’t really matter.” She can’t decide if that’s meant to be a joke or not. “I’ll pay you back, promise.”

“Do promises from you mean anything?” she asks.

“This one will.” There’s something about the sheer force of those words that push Gwen over the edge and make her pick up her jacket and grab some notes out of her purse.

“Am I allowed to ask what happened?”

“That’s classified,” he says. “Just… can you bring them to my house?” He gasps again and it’s filled with enough pain to make Gwen stop in her tracks. “Please?”

“Okay,” she says softly, her fingers laying on the door handle. “I’ll be there. Half an hour, tops.” Most of that time will probably be spent telling half-truths to her parents, but he doesn’t need to know that.

She hangs up after he croaks out a ‘thank you’, a phrase she can’t imagine coming out of his mouth unless it’s anything other than sarcastic. She takes the stairs two at a time and picks up the pace as she heads for the pharmacy, slowing down only once to ask where his address is.

He responds with the instruction that she leave it on the doorstep and nothing else, and its exactly the lack of sarcastic charm that worries her.

*****

His house is normal by all accounts. She isn’t entirely sure what she was expecting and maybe that says more about her than anything else. It’s in a neighbourhood that’s less… well-off as hers and even Ben’s, but it’s not necessarily a bad place. His house is a lot smaller than hers too and marked out by his car parked in the drive. The downstairs curtains are all drawn, but light glows behind one of them and she guesses that’s where he is, despite no sign of a silhouette or anything that might give him away.

She drops the bag on the doorstep and raps the door before crossing her arms over her chest, her body shaking not entirely from the cold. It’s not that she’s never been alone with him, it’s just that whenever she is, Ben is often not too far away and it’s at least somewhere familiar. Being at his house feels far too intimate, and it makes her rap the door again.

She gets a response, but it’s a text, not him.

_‘Thanks. You can go home now, I’ve got it. I’ll pay you back next time I see you. I appreciate this. Really.’_

Gwen takes a step back, biting the inside of her cheek. Unlike some, she can pick up on hints, and these ones are so subtle he might as well have pinned a note saying ‘I don’t want to see you’ on the door. There’s an odd heaviness in her chest at the thought and she can’t pin down why she feels like that. Her stubborn streak tells her to turn around now, since its clearly what he wants and if he can’t talk to her face to face that’s his problem. She’s tempted, she can’t lie. They could see each other tomorrow, regard each other briefly and never speak about this again. Just turn around and go home and resume their normal almost-friends kind of relationship. Whatever is going on can’t be much worse than what he’s been through before. He’s survived this much on his own and it’s not like she wants to know anyway. So really, she should just go home and pretend this never happened.

“Oh God,” she sighs as she feels herself turn around as though there’s a string attached to her body and marches right up to Kevin’s door. It barely takes anything for her to open it, and there’s not a mark left on the wood either. She’s getting better at this.

“Gwen!”

“Jesus!”

Kevin is leaning against the wall, one eye wide in confused shock and the other swollen and purple. His hair sticks to his cheek, coated in red. No wonder it took him so long to reach the door; he’s putting all his weight on his right leg while the other trails behind him and his arm is wrapped around himself and holding his side. His already pale skin is two shades paler, making every other colour stand out. For a while, all the two can do is look at each other as his breathing, more ragged and worried than it had been on the phone, fills the air between them.

“I told you to leave it on the step,” he says, his voice too weak for anger.

“You’re lucky I didn’t,” she replies, closing the door firmly behind her. “Kev what happened to you?”

“None of your business,” he spits back. Cute. She raises an eyebrow and holds the bag up in front of him, out of his reach.

“Given that I got you these, I’d say it is my business.” She smirks at him, cold and empty on her lips. “I bet I could make it down that street faster than you could catch me in this state.”

“Oh well that’s real heroic of you, isn’t it?” he replies as he pushes himself up, only to let out a yelp as he puts pressure on his other leg. She’s at his side before either one of them can say anything, grasping his shoulder and wrapping her other arm around his waist. Maybe under other circumstances, she’d feel something else, being so close to him, but the worry and the confusion block out anything else.

“Thank you,” he breathes. “Thank you.”

“Okay, tough guy,” she says. “Let’s get you sitting down, okay?”

He’s either too tired to argue or knows better and so he lets her half-help half-drag him into the kitchen and sit him down at the table before running to the sink and splashing a cloth with cold water. She takes a look back at him as she does so, taking in his heaving chest and how his hand shakes as he pushes his hair back, and her chest gets tight. She really doesn’t want to have to ask her mom to pick her up from a hospital.

“So do I get to know what exactly happened?” she asks as she starts gently sponging the blood off his face. He avoids her eyes, his fist clenching and unclenching on the table.

“I got into a fight,” he admits with a bitter tone.

“That much I gathered,” she says. “Unless you like to throw yourself in front of cars for fun.” He chuckles at that, even if he winces a second later. “Who was the fight with?”

“No one you know.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because I know those guys, and you don’t know them,” he says matter-of-factly. As though it should be obvious to her. She flicks the cloth in his face for that comment. “Look,” he sighs. “Those guys hang around my neighbourhood and never leave. And you’ve never been here before now.” She stays quiet. He’s right, of course, and what’s worse is he knows it. Next to the blood on his face and pain in his eyes there’s a self-satisfied little smirk that she’d slap him for if he wasn’t in enough pain already.

“Did you start it?” she asks instead.

“Oh your faith in me is touching,” he mumbles. “Not really.”

“Not really?” she echoes. His eyes only meet hers for a moment and there’s an entire untold story in them. She gets up and rinses the cloth out, the water running scarlet at first. The air between them is so tight she feels like she’s suffocating and at a guess, he probably feels the same way.

“Your mom’s going to kill me for this,” she says, gesturing to the stained cloth.

“It’s fine,” he sighs. “I’ll just tell her it was me.” She sits back down and continues wiping his face, gentle around the bruised eye, only now noticing how he’s seemingly phasing in and out of focus.

“Where is your mom anyway?”

“Working,” he replies. “She’s on the late shift tonight. She won’t get in until like 1am or something.” Gwen nods, finding herself teetering on the edge of actually getting to know him. Sure she knows some stuff about him, but none of it really matters, movie preferences and his favourite food and that he really likes that car. The richest piece of information she has about him is that he used to have a dog. And now she’s in his house, talking about his mom, and it’s the closest she’s been to him in more ways than one.

She finds the source of the blood, or should she say sources; one nasty looking gash on his cheekbone and another near his temple, and she cringes before she can stop herself.

“They’re that bad?” he asks. She can only nod and reaches for the bag, but despite the state he’s in, he’s faster, and pulls out the ointment and the bandages. He looks up at her, the faint beginnings of a reassuring smile on his face. “Thanks, I’ve got this.”

“You’re sure?” she asks.

“I’ve patched myself up before,” he tells her. “And I was way worse than this.”

“Somehow that does not reassure me.” He huffs out a laugh and despite herself, she laughs too.

She watches his unsteady hands apply ointment to his cuts like its nothing, giving him directions but nothing else. She grabs his hand and legs him squeeze her as tight as he needs when it starts to sting. The tension in the air lessens, not entirely, but enough for her to put away her discomfort and start to almost feel at ease here, all the while being somewhat fascinated by him in this state. It’s the most open she’s ever seen, the careful guard completely discarded and every weakness open on his face.

“Here,” she says, lifting the bandages away from him. She stands over him and his eyes follow her, annoyance sparking in them. “Trust me, it’s better to have someone else do it. You’re not the only one who’s gotten into their fair share of scrapes.”

“Oh what happened?” he teases. “You smack one of your little prep school buddies?”

“Not exactly,” she says. “I mean did hit a girl with a lacrosse stick once.” She chuckles and raises an eyebrow at him. “By accident. And only because she had it coming.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything else.” She smirks, an odd, proud feeling blooming in her chest, especially with the way he’s looking at her. Much as she tries to, she can’t hate it.

She pushes Kevin’s hair, still matted with blood, away from his face, a shiver running down her back as she does so. They’re both silent, her in concentration and him in… she doesn’t know. All she knows is that the feeling of his hair in her hands is entirely unfamiliar and quite… she’s not sure. Exciting? Not really. The word ‘intoxicating’ crosses her mind and although it’s closer, she doesn’t want to admit to it. She smoothes out the bandage on his temple, her touch dangerously close to affectionate. Loving, even. All it would take is a turn of her hand and something practical between two acquaintances could become something very different.

She won’t deny that Kevin’s turned her head. And he can deny that she’s turned his, but she still sees it. And if he asked her out, maybe she’d say yes. It could be fun, him and her. But there’s fun and then there’s this. Something serious could hurt a lot more than something fun.

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” His voice is so sudden that she actually jumps back, a small gasp escaping her throat. Maybe under different circumstances he’d have laughed, but he’s quiet now, giving her nothing but a stiff shrug. “You wanted to know why I was in that fight.”

“Oh,” she replies. “Is that all there was to it?”

“I…” he begins slowly, choosing his next words carefully. “May have also said the wrong things. To the wrong people. At the wrong place. At the wrong time.”

“That’s a whole lot of wrong,” she sighs.

“Story of my life.” There’s so much bitterness in those four words that Gwen actually winces and when she turns to look at him it’s with equal measures of severity and fondness. As she searches for the right words, her hand pushes his hair out of his eyes, again teetering the line between friends and something else.

She considers telling him that he’s wrong about himself, that he’s proven he’s capable of changing and more than willing to do it. She considers looking him in the eye and telling him he’s worth far more than he gives himself credit for and that she knows because she’s seen it first-hand.

“Maybe,” is what she says instead. The corner of his mouth turns up at that. She looks him over again; his hand is still on his side and his leg hasn’t moved at all since he sat down. “How else are you feeling. And don’t lie to me.”

“Because you’ll know?” She nods and the grin grows wider. It’s different from what she’s grown used to; not teasing or amused or even excited. She’s tempted to say ‘respectful’. She’s barely been here half an hour and yet she’s seen so many new sides to him. “My ribs hurt pretty bad. And frankly I’m too nervous to try walking.”

“I don’t think anything’s broken,” she says. “Otherwise you’d be in a lot more pain than you’re in currently.”

“I’m very good at hiding pain.”

“That’s not helpful,” she tells him. “You emo.” She bites her lip. He may have been teasing but he’s now put the idea in her head and it’s made a nice home there. “Kev… I need you to take off your shirt.”

“Woah I don’t do that on the first night.” She rolls her eyes, over-exaggerating so she’s sure he caught it, and does consider walking out the door and letting him fend for himself.

“Just so I can see your ribs, jerk,” she tells him. Now its his turn to roll his eyes but he does as instructed, holding back a grunt as the lifts his shirt, revealing crimson bruises on his chest. When she touches them, they’re rough beneath her fingertips and his chest barely moves. “I don’t think anything’s broken.” She leans back in her chair and he moves his shirt back down. “Must have been quite the fight.”

“You should see the other guys,” he jokes. “They look better than me.” She nods, her mouth staying shut. She knows he’s better than this, or at least he can be. She also knows he won’t tell her more than he already has. That’s what’s worried her so much.

“How’s the leg?” she says.

“As long as I sit here, not too bad,” he tells her. She raises and eyebrow at him and then, out of all the things he could do, he takes her hand and gives her this soft kind of smile that makes her catch her breath. “It’s not as painful as it was an hour ago. So that means something, doesn’t it?”

“Want to try to stand up?”

“Do I have a choice?” he asks.

“Hey.” She gives his hand a squeeze. “It’s fine. I’ll be holding onto you the whole time.” His mouth falls half-open, a word forming and disappearing just as quickly and gratitude shining in his dark eyes.

“Okay.”

It’s not as okay as he makes it out to be. He he’s barely pushed himself up from the table when his eyes bulge and his mouth open in a silent scream. He reaches his hand out and she’s holding it in an instant, her other arm wrapped around his shoulders and his ragged breath on her cheek. His hold on her hand turns from cautious to desperate, her skin turning red and his nails leaving marks there. His shoulder shake with exertion so much that even when he’s standing, she doesn’t let go of him.

“Well that was easy,” he gasps. Gwen nods, paying his leg more attention than anything else. It doesn’t look broken, but what would she know?

“Shouldn’t you go to a hospital?” she asks him.

“I’m fine,” he says, a little too sharp for her. And for him, given how he winces and his hand flies to his side. “I don’t want to freak my mom out. Besides, I know if I need a hospital. Trust me, I don’t right.”

“You’re sure?”

“If I did, do you think I would have called you?”

Stunned, she lifts her head to meet his eyes. The words hang in the air between them and despite being almost chest to chest with him, she feels like they’ve the pushed the two of them apart. Maybe she should be flattered by that, maybe it means he trusts her more than he would anyone else. Maybe she was just the next best thing and it was between her and Ben. His face gives nothing away, as per usual, other than whatever the answer is, he thought it was obvious. 

“I guess not,” she says.

She must look almost as hurt as she feels, because he laces his fingers with hers, his touch comforting and hesitant at the same time.

“Thank you,” he says. “I know I’ve said it a lot. But thank you. For coming over here.”

“You’re one of us now,” she tells him. “We look out for each other.” She offers him a shrug and her next words are the most confident she’s felt all night. “You’d have done the same for me.”

“Maybe.”

 _Definitely_ she thinks.

She helps him get two ice packs out of the freezer, despite his insistence that he can do it himself and shows him the painkillers she got, explaining them in far more detail than she needs to, including why she got these specifically and how she’s not sure they’re the best ones. As she rambles, his smile only grows wider until she trails off, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Am I amusing to you?”

“Little bit,” he replies before his face grows serious. “I’ll pay you back, Gwen. Next time I see you-”

“Don’t,” she interrupts, holding up her hand. “You don’t have to. Here’s what you can do instead…” She takes his chin and tilts it to look at her. “Don’t get into any more fights.”

“In our line of work I can’t promise that.”

“Don’t get into any fights without us,” she tells him. “Stop going to the wrong place at the wrong time and saying the wrong things to the wrong people. I know you’ve got a brain in that pretty little head of yours. Try using it, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he tells her and that smile does something to her heart that she doesn’t want to know.

He walks her to the door, or rather limps to the door. Ever the gentleman.

“I wish I could drive you home,” he tells her.

“Yeah you might be out of commission for a while,” she says. “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m always okay.”

“Debatable.” He may be fine for tonight, but who knows what they’ll have to face down tomorrow. Threats that could do twice as much damage in half the time. “Be careful for a while, okay? I don’t want you getting more hurt.”

“Careful, Gwen,” he teases. “People might think you care.”

He leans forward, and for an insane, uncharacteristically wild moment, she wonders if he’s going to kiss her and she has a split second, if even that, to wonder how she would react if he did. But instead the door opens and cold air blows against her legs and she’s brought back to reality. They’re teammates and on a good day, friends. Nothing else.

“Good night, Kevin,” she says, giving him one last look before he closes the door.

“Good night, Gwen.”

She heads off down the road, her hands in her pockets, back to her pretty neighbourhood and her big house. She’ll spend a lot of tonight and every night until she sees him again worrying about him, she knows it. But she also knows he’d do the same thing for her. And she also knows that of all the numbers he could have called, all the people he could have asked for help, he went to her. She knows he has access to all kinds of people, and yet he called her. That counts for something, she decides. She’s making it count for something. And to prove it, to herself and to him, she saves his number in her phone.

People might think you care, he had said. Well so what if she does?

**Author's Note:**

> leave comments and kudos to validate me perhaps?


End file.
